


Crux

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [11]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: (Because Immortan Joe), (Mention of) non-platonic puppy piles, (mention of) trans warboy, Buckle Up Kids We're Driving Into A Feels Tornado, Gen, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con, discussion of past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4609014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Crux: The most difficult portion of a climb.</i>
</p><p>“Let me think about it, Miss Giddy,” Furiosa says as she wakes up, “Give me some time.” </p><p>Her mouth tastes of sleep. She blinks her eyes open.</p><p>Ace is looking back at her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crux

There was a large trade party visiting the Citadel, and Joe had ordered her into the vault to guard his wives. Furiosa had accepted the order with a blank expression. She knew he did not know she'd been in the vault, but that didn't stop him from cackling about how she should be sure not to befoul his delicate treasures with her unwomanly self.  

She had spent the first six hours standing silently just inside the entrance, trying to tame the wild shudders that tore through her spine at being in this place.

Then Miss Giddy had slowly walked over to her and offered her tea, and a place in their circle. And Furiosa, who could keep her thoughts to herself and follow her own path with her War Boys with the other Imperators and even with Joe, had offered the old woman her elbow for the walk back, had done it before she'd even thought about it. She had sat down at the old woman's feet and accepted the teacup and felt things she hadn't known she still could.

Including guilt. She remembered the girl giving her hard looks from across the circle. Remembered the smell of her flesh getting branded.

She hadn't spoken, that first time, as the girls talked about half-forgotten concepts, read each other poetry, debated trade and the function of worth, as Miss Giddy looked on fondly.

 **I, in this darkness,  
** **am imagining a bright lamb  
** who comes to graze  
on the grass of my exhaustion

She'd scarcely remembered how to speak, only drank a half-remembered taste and blinked up at the elder who'd seemed as if she ought to have had a rifle slung across her back, tried not to look at the women who spoke with such clarity of thought, and she'd felt awed and _young_. She’d felt like she’d walked into sunlight without grease shading her eyes to temper the brightness.

And afterward, when Ace had met her eyes with the look that meant 'do you want us up, tonight?' she'd shaken her head. Her head had been full of abstract concepts she could only partially understand, her mind not used to thinking about value freely given and false commodities, nor of the snatches of poetry she could not forget.

 **I, in this darkness,  
** see the wet extension  
of my arms under a rainfall,  
that rain which drenched the first prayers of man

Many thousand-days of living as a Warboy and later an Imperator had given her a machine mind, all the unnecessary thoughts and parts taken out to make it run clean and efficient without much thought, without much lingering.

That night, she was _exhausted_ . Almost seven thousand days running on fumes catching up on her, as she finally let herself feel tired. She was hurting in a way she welcomed, _embraced_ , with the memory of sitting at her Initiate Mother's feet, listening to poetry, to songs, to stories about the Old World.

Having her crew around her was usually comforting, restful even, but she almost recoiled at the thought of their chatter around her now.

_Not tonight._

Ace just nodded in acceptance, and she tried not to feel guilty.

 

"Tell us about where you're from?" Miss Giddy suggested gently, a next visit. And Furiosa didn't know if she had it in her to refuse anything, the gentleness of this woman underlain with familiar steel, the kindness in her eyes that said home, home, _home_.

She told them about the Green Place.

 **I, in this darkness,  
** opened the door to ancient meadows,  
to goldens  
upon the wall of myth,  
whereon we feasted our eyes.

The girls asked her questions. And then a few visits later they asked her _that_ question:

_"No."_

_"But you just said—”_

_"I doubt it even still exists anymore. It's been a long time." Seven thousand days, seven thousand days.._

The tea that afternoon was dusty, she shut her mouth around it.

_"But what if it does?" Cheedo asked, her fingers running around and around the edge of her glove, one that matches on another._

_That next_ _morning the tea tastes of green, she doesn’t know what to do with it and her throat closes up around the mouthful._

_"Who'd— who'd want me back? After the things I've done?" She asks the next next afternoon. She doesn’t remember the taste of tea that day. It was like scalding aqua-cola, tinted iron._

_"After you helped us escape?" Angharad prodded._

_Her machine-mind brought up how Joe's face might look when he'd realise that the vault was empty. Her tea was cold._

_She was quiet for too long, she knew it by the light that came into Angharad's eyes. She knew by the different teas that she drank, day after day, the different places of the sun in these pieces of memory._

_"We know you didn't have a choice. You did what you had to, to survive." Black tea, that time, bitter and bracing, she drank it all the way down to the dregs._

_"Does that really matter," Furiosa asked, meeting Toast's eyes for the first time since the girl had been in the cab of the War Rig, hissing angry and pleading in turns._

_"It will if you help us," Toast decided, voice hard._

_Echoed Dag, voice hurting. Echoed Angharad, a hand on her belly, voice bright, voice green._

_Miss Giddy called that day’s tea Mint. And asked if she’d like some more._

**I, in this darkness  
** say roots— and for the new growth  
on the bush of death  
I expressed:

"water"

“Let me think about it, Miss Giddy,” Furiosa says as she wakes up, “Give me some time.”

Her mouth tastes of sleep. She blinks her eyes open.

Ace is looking back at her.

* * *

 

"That's where you were, weren't you? When you’d disappear on us. Planning it all." Ace blows out a puff of air and shoves himself upright even though it hurts.

"What?"

"Do you know that the crew covered for you sometimes, when you'd go off in a corner and work on your arm? We'd say we just saw you in another tower, or heading to the mess, or planning the next raid." He forces himself out of the bed. He needs to be moving for this.

"Ace—" She works herself upright as well.

"Sometimes it wasn't your arm. A particularly bad moon-dark sometimes. Or when you'd get more banged up than usual.” The Ace paces through the room in an irregular angry shuffle, holding an arm against his ribs and feeling like his lungs want to fall out, “Thought it'd been one of those that you'd been hiding from us, when you'd started wandering off."

"You noticed." She holds herself even more rigid. She’s tilting slightly and he’s not sure she realizes. It makes some part of Ace squirm to see her like this.

"You think we wouldn't?! _Boss_ ," his voice is strained as he makes another circuit, not being able to look at her, "What made you think that. If you'd only given us _some idea_ —"

"I tried to ask your opinion—" there’s the sound of the mattress shifting and then she’s blocking his path.

"When?!” He rocks forward, ” _When_ did that ever come up."

Furiosa holds her ground, frowning, "I asked what you thought of… of living beyond the Citadel."

"Are the wastes are even an option?” Ace clutches at the back of his neck, it’s sore like a headache. “You’re finally telling me of these people you’re,” and he chokes on this a little, “you’re a part of, this ‘green place’—"

Furiosa’s eyes go blank.

"I'd no idea anything like a green place was _there._ Boss, why didn't you ever give it to us straight?"

She’s steely, even wounded and looking to fall over, "...I couldn't risk it."

"And there it is." Ace's face feels a shatter of itself, trying to hold itself together and to keep his gaze on her, "There it is: you don't trust us. You could just say it flat out."

"I _trust_ you,” she pushes up to him, practically a headbutt, as if he’s _wrong_ , “I trust you to guard my flank, to guard my crew."

"...but not with _yourself?_ "

“I _sleep_ next to you,” she hisses. “I let you take me to Organic!”

“What does that even _mean_?” Ace isn’t seeing how this relates to trust at all.

"You can’t—” Her voice is hard, breathless. “ _You've never lived as a breeder in the Citadel_."

Ace steps back in confusion, a turn of the conversation he wasn’t expecting. He didn't realize he'd been looming.

“Do you remember that first time—” she pauses to catch her breath, “you took me to Organic?”

Ace nods warily. He wasn’t likely to forget that.

“Why didn’t you just leave me there?”

“Boss, you were— he was— I’d never seen him...“ He makes a frustrated gesture. “The way he touched you. I _couldn’t_. Not if I were your Ace.”  

He feels weighed underneath her gaze as her next words crash into him—

“Joe was like that.”

Ace feels himself trip, found himself up against a wall. Breathes hard. Tries to reconcile this: his knowledge that Immortan Joe had tried so hard to provide for them all, against imagining him touching his Boss like the Mechanic did, with so little respect. Imagining her frozen and queasy, like she had been that day, and the Immortan not stopping.

Tries to reconcile several thousand days worth of memories against that.

His stomach tries to to fold itself small and cram itself up his throat. He tries to swallow it back down.

The Immortan had given them shelter where there were none, and a way of life worth living despite how quickly it runs down. Ace would have thought the Immortan would be cautious with his prized breeders, like how the Repair Boys work their rides, gentle and reverent, knowing that every part was precious and hard-won no matter its origins, no matter how much chrome remains.

Imperators sometimes took their crew up to their room for a Use. It was to be Something, but nobody had expected that from Furiosa. After she’d been with the Immortan, what Use could she have for War Boys? How could they hope to even try to live up to Him?

She’d led the whole crew up after coming out of their second successful run, and they’d been taken aback at her stamina— _she wanted the whole crew?_ — but willing. They’d entered her sunset-lit room, with its opening to the outside and circulating air, like raw blackthumbs in their first garage bay, tentative and awed and unsure of their welcome. But in the end she’d only wanted them to be in her quarters to rest, to _repair_ ; in hindsight, perhaps because the Mechanic’s room had been suffocating to her.

Furiosa hums, considering, eyes vacant, swaying where she stood.

“No, Joe was _worse_ ,” she cut into his thoughts, voice low and flat. “You had to pretend you liked it. And everybody told you to be grateful for his attention. Nobody… _nobody_ saw.”

Ace feels sightless with trying to wrap his mind around this, trying to place this new information into his memories and feeling his memories _twist_. Every look, every reaction cast in a different light, like the warp of the Citadel at dawn versus dusk— shadow and light hiding and revealing different aspects.

When eventually the crew had folded around her, and the Boss had started accepting the Useful comfort they offered, they’d imagined themselves always falling short of what she’d received from the Immortan Joe. She’d accepted their touch so stiffly that each of them thought they’d been lacking until one of the younger ones broke, asking for advice.

Asking her how the Immortan had touched her, so they might do the same.

She’d gone cold and expressionless, and had been distant with them for days afterward, like she couldn’t stand their proximity. Her reaction always seemed particularly strong to him and he’d hadn’t known how to rationalize it except that they’d fallen so far short.

It had shamed them at the time to realize that they weren’t just individually failing her, that they’d done so as a unit, as a whole.

The Ace had stepped in before they’d all decided to do something stupid like throw themselves off the rock, and yelled at them to try harder then, or _different_ , because their Imperator was different. Their Imperator had been a prized breeder who’d _known_ Joe.

They’d thrashed their heads wondering how the Immortan Joe might’ve been better for her; protective they’d thought, like they’d treat the most valuable of rides. Gentle, like handling the rare rubber hose or timing belts. He’d ride her with care for her limits, they’d thought. He’d listen to her every sound, finetune his handling until she purred.

They tried to be that for her, to be worthy of the Immortan, for her. And after a long period of distrust she’d eventually found them to be a close enough proxy to Joe, or so Ace had thought.

Thought wrongly, he knows now.

All those little moments he hadn’t seen, or had seen but not recognized.

He remembers the first time when Sprocket, long since gone to Valhalla, had spent a long time with his face between her legs, and there had been moans, sounds they’d been sure were good. Finally she’d pulled Ace close and buried her face against his neck, and she’d gasped and shuddered and sobbed, and he’d realised with something of horror that the wetness he felt on his skin was from _tears_ . Had they _completely fucked it up?_

But she’d blindly pulled Sprocket up against her too, until she was bracketed by their bodies, and she hadn’t moved or spoken for a long time, and finally drifted off to sleep. Ace had thought for sure that the tears had been because it had reminded her of how the Immortan used to make her feel. She’d requested it often after that time, which seemed to confirm it.

Had their fumbling attempts back then instead been the first time that Furiosa had _ever_ , since coming to the Citadel, received regard that did not echo the Mechanic’s? The memory of that man’s hand on their Boss’ hip still repulses him, and if his Imperator had had _worse_ , if that was what being a breeder for the Immortan was _like_ …

He tries to imagine what it might’ve been like if he’d actually been like Joe, Furiosa under him and angry, stone-faced and sick, and what kind of person you'd have to be to _not stop_ —

gorge rises up in his throat.

Because he _knows_ what kind of person. He’d seen it in some of the War Boys and never let those even come close to consideration for crew. The idea of those Boys around even other _crewmates_ , let alone Furiosa...

The dull horror crashes through Ace in waves. He would think he wrapped his mind around it, and it’d slip off, and he finds some new aspect of it that crushes him from another angle.

He remembers the way she'd tremble at each new touch, when the Comfort had first started. How even later each new crew member had needed to— Ace had thought she'd wanted them to prove themselves in battle before they were allowed near her, before they were worthy of touching her, but it all seemed so different now.

They had tried so hard to touch her the way they'd thought the Immortan must have touched her, and all that time she'd been learning how to enjoy being touched at all. It had never even occurred to him at the time, but he wondered now if the reason Sprocket had been the first to be allowed to truly touch the Boss, to find ways to make her feel Good, was because Sprocket'd had no gearstick.

He forced his mind's eye away from the odd, lost look he'd seen in her eyes that first time she'd let him and Sprocket into her quarters for Comfort but hadn't known what to do with them, and landed on the mental image of the short, brown-skinned Wife he now knew as Toast.

And recoiled. The Boss had brought the girl— she'd known— she'd _known_ and had no choice but to—

He remembered them wiping the stench of scorched flesh from her hair. They'd thought she'd been _jealous_. That they were comforting her for missing the Immortan's attentions.

He's distracted from his thoughts by a painfully stifled cough, and when he glances up Furiosa has moved to leaning against the wall as well. She's next to him, the wall is barely propping her up, she's looking worn leaf-thin. He wonders how with all the misunderstanding, they'd managed not to fuck up a lot worse than they had, that she’s still willing to be so near him.

He sees the moment her knees give and instinctively reaches out to catch her by the arm, help her down onto the mattress. Helps her prop up her torso onto a cushion so she'll breath a little easier. He sits down, his ribs screaming. Keeps an arm's length of space between them.

She sounds breathless and flat and tired. "I didn't think you'd understand, without having lived it."

"But now you think I might understand, or we wouldn't be having this conversation.” Ace says dully, mind still ticking over, “Even half-dead, you'd’ve shredded us where we stood if you'd thought we would be still loyal to Joe."

"Not so much as that," she turns her eyes towards him finally, and they are liquid.

He looks at her. Concedes, "Maybe not so much as that." Maybe simply let a sandstorm take them instead, unwilling to touch them.

They sit there for a while quietly.

"What changed?" Ace has to ask.

"There was... a war boy, who'd caught up to us. Seemed to understand. After it was.... explained to him enough." Furiosa closes her eyes. "And a man who…" she needs a moment to catch her breath. "Who understood without much... being said at all." There’s something about the line of her neck that reminds Ace of how she looked after a good hard fight that she’d won, grimly satisfied even while hurt.

He's aching with the thought that two men merited her explanations while he had been left to make his mistakes in ignorance. Why them? Why not her Ace? He can't ask her that, he's too afraid of what she might answer.

"Think I'd like to meet these two, Boss," Ace suggests, then catches how her shoulders tensed. "Well, if they're still alive."

A shoulder lifts. Falls.

 _Ah_. Right then.

Her eyes keep going glassy and unfocused, and she keeps snapping back, as if her body is insisting on sleep but she is holding it off with all her considerable willpower.

It takes him a moment to realise she is waiting for _him_ \- for him to say something, perhaps to show her how things are going to be between them. He doesn't think he has ever knowingly held so much power over her, and it's startling, something he needs to think about. Things between them have changed and he knows it will take time for his injured pride and trust to heal, just as much as it will for the injured ribs to heal.

"Sleep, Boss," he says softly. She stubbornly resists, fighting to keep awake, and he can't help but smile. He may not be confident he understands her anymore, may not be sure if if he ever did at all, but _this_ Furiosa he knows.  

"Stubborn."

Finally he moves over to her side, cups his broad hand over the top of her head. She makes a small, dazed sound, and he pats her head gently, once, twice.  

"Sleep, Boss," he says again, and this time she finally allows her eyes to drift shut.

Ace settles down an arms length away from her, uneasy with being near to her when he's just learning how deeply wrong he's been about her. What other signals has he missed, ignored, attributed to the wrong reasons? He can't touch her right now, he can't be sure she wants him to, so he lays down on the other side of the mattress and tries to calm the maelstrom of thoughts in his mind. He doesn't succeed very well.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem is _From Green To Green_ by Sohrab Sepehry
> 
> Thanks to Mumblingsage for looking this over for us


End file.
